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Comment by sambe | Hacker News Reader

When I have reported black cab drivers misleading passengers, lying about pricing and regulations or bus drivers driving dangerously and being rude to everyone, TfL are totally uninterested. They give the impression that they know the scams operate and don't care. It's an interesting comparison with my Uber experience, which has been almost flawless and issues are usually fixed by Uber themselves promptly.

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Same experience here. Nothing done about a virtual mugging where the cabbie had no idea where he was going, shouted at me and told me I was a cunt because I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for it and pulled him up on it. I rounded his fee down to the nearest £10 and told him to sue me.

I’ve seen black cab drivers shouting “Uber scum” and spitting in the windows of Uber drivers before. This isn’t want I and my wife wanted to experience when you’re getting into an Uber literally after she’s had a hospital appointment and surgery.

I’d rather fucking well walk than get in a black cab.

This whole thing is sad. TfL is a total turd bag as well. Constantly getting overcharged on contactless so I have gone back to prepaid oyster. Customer services tell me I’m a dumbass but several people I know have the same problem on the same routes.

This is where prepaid mastercards which sync up to an app on your phone come in really handy.

You get a push notification instantly as soon as a contactless transaction goes through so you know right away if you've been ripped off.

That's not a bad idea actually and the prepaid card actually stays as real money, not "non refundable blue TFL smart card arbitrary number"

In what way are Oyster cards/credit not refundable?

Don't you have to take them to a ticket office?

Only works in some stations and most refuse to deal with it. The there’s the online refund system which is unable to process a refund half of the time.

True, but that does not work for TfL because of how they charge you. Details:

http://news.revolut.com/post/146212645837/touch-it-tap-it-re...

I've been charged a wrong amount by TfL a few times in the past, I contacted them (either on the phone or via the webform) and I was always reimbursed. There are basically two situations where you get charged a wrong amount:

1. common: the "touch out" did not work. Just log in and click "refund previous trip".

2. rare: some weird software exception where your trip is charged via a Zone that you did not travel through.

The second happened to me a few times but honestly if I think of the massive amount of complex/arcane/exceptional software rules they must have ...I feel I cannot blame their software engineers :)

The option (2) happened to me many times in a row. One of the intermediate touch stations that you're supposed to whack at Highbury and Islington when you transition from tube to rail wasn't reporting or not working. This meant I got mugged every day for a week.

Getting the cash out of them proved very difficult.

Sure there are arcane and complex rules but the nature of those demands that the liability is on them.

You didn't get mugged. Please don't downplay muggings. Getting mugged is much worse than paying too much because of a software error. Tfl always reimburses and they pay out to any bank account, you just have to call them for the details. I can understand that it's annoying but that wasn't mugging.

Did you report the faulty purple reader? Those are used by several thousand people per day, I've never seen card readers out of service for more than a day.

Mugging is a colloquial term. Yes I did report the faulty reader. The reader was reading cards and acknowledging them ergo it wasn't faulty and I was charged correctly apparently. Unfortunately this was, to use another colloquial term, bollocks.

No, "mugging" is not a colloquial term for "overcharged" or anything else for that matter.

I’ve lived in London for over 35 years. It’s common parlance. That kebab shop was a mugging. You were mugged in the apple store. Etc etc.

I consulted three dictionaries, including a British one, before writing that comment.

Your use very fringe at best and is very inappropriate anywhere else, as it was pointed out to you.

> Your use very fringe at best and is very inappropriate anywhere else

New Yorker here. Perfectly fine usage there. “The cab driver robbed me” is our local variant.

"Robbed" is not the same as "mugged." You are correct that "robbed" does have a colloquial definition.

>informal overcharge (someone) for something.

If you overpayed you were mugged. Very normal term here in the UK.

Honestly it seems those dictionaries are not at all up to date with common English informal phrases. Source: native and resident Londoner of >40 years, and user of "mugging" in the "ripped off" sense for most of them.

You might find this interesting: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/20477/what-exact...

Dictionaries lag behind the language. They do not define the language. [1] Metaphorically, the dictionary is a slightly out of date road map, it doesn't define the road network. When the poster tells you of a new road, he isn't "wrong" just because it doesn't show up on your old map.

[1] http://www.maximumfun.org/adam-ruins-everything/adam-ruins-e...

Wait. What? In 2017? There are instructions and I have to report broken equipment? I have to figure out instructions on payment system?! There's no button to handle it all on my phone?

Cabs should either operate as well as Uber or die. Instead of figuring out how to become as good or better than Uber they are trying to push Uber out. That just means someone else would show up.

He's talking about the tube, not cab services.

> Wait. What? In 2017? There are instructions and I have to report broken equipment? I have to figure out instructions on payment system?! There's no button to handle it all on my phone?

lol nice bit

wait are you serious

Yes, I am. There's no bloody way I am going to use a dumber system is smarter option is available.

Hope you enjoy being angry all the time over literally pointless minutia

They do in the uk in my experience I call them up tell them where I want to go I get a SMS when they dispatch the cab and another when it arrives.

Only problem is during the school run time as many parents don't want "Oliver" or "Lucinda" to slum it with the poor kids on the school bus

Not in my experience, the cab is always "just round the corner" when it's 10 minutes late and I ring to chase it up. Another 15 minutes and maybe it arrives, or maybe I ring again and "oh we had to cancel it".

When uber is available it's a glorious system - know exactly where the cab is, which one it is (when it's busy and there are many outside), no "I don't go south of the river" type drivers, takes credit card (no "the machine is broken" at the end of the trip, or try to flag down a black cab that does take card), always get a receipt, not a scrap of paper you have to fill yourself, etc etc.

The only problem is it's not available in the town I live in. The local mini cab firms usually refuse to take bookings for short trips (2 miles), and usually refuse them even when you want one asap

Phoning for a cab is 1980s technology. I've used uber in a dozen countries on 4 continents, the same experience every time, far better than any mini cab or taxi (in NYC taxis force adverts down your throat!)

That's quite interesting. Option 1 has happened to me a few times with an Oyster card, and I've always had issues claiming refunds, receiving this message: "We have been unable to process your refund application, This is due to a technical error."

Since switching to using my Monzo card, I've had this issue one time and received the refund no problems. Not sure if that's coincidental.

Ah yes I got a similar error.

I designed the original tariffing engine for Oyster back in 2003/4. Compared to similar work I did for cellphone operators this was interesting in that Oyster actively seek to charge the lowest amount possible. The engine is pretty simple in that it does a shortest-path (£-based) determination between start and end stations. The trick was dealing with trips where a weekly or monthly travel card covers part of the route, and pay-as-you-go the rest. There are other edge cases that cannot be handled at all - having a travel card for, say, a trip through zones 1 and 2, and a pre-purchased ticket for zones 3 and 4 for a trip from zone 2 to 4.

Where can i get that in the UK?

Monzo, Monese and Revolut all offer this.

No banks I'll have heard of, then? Do you use one you'd recommend?

I've used 2 out of 3 of those, they all work as expected and work with same day deposits

I use Monzo, and would highly recommend them. Great customer support, very transparent (you can see their trello roadmap, they interact with the community via forums and Slack) and I love their product too (have switched over to their current account as primary bank account now). They have somre really great people working there too - if you're in London they have a lot of events and talks that are pretty interesting.

I and a lot of my friends use Revolut and it's excellent. They're a very well funded FinTech startup and have been around for a few years.

I use Monzo and Starling. I'm very happy with both of these and prefer them to my old bank (Halifax).

I've been a happy Monzo user for at least a year, but recently got a Starling account because they have Android Pay and Monzo don't.

However, if you use a credit card like amex, you always have the option of resolving it with them should tfl fail.

> spitting in the windows of Uber drivers before

In South Africa the local metered taxis have gone as far as petrol bombing Uber drivers cars.

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2017-09-07-wat...

Nothing in South Africa surprises me these days to be honest. I've had too many colleagues from that part of the world :)

On the other hand, my cab driver left with my girlfriend's phone and never returned it back. Uber completely ignored us.

Having lived in London for several years, I have a special hatred of black cab drivers. I have never had a single good experience using a black cab, and very few of my friends do either. Complaints range from refusing to take a fare (which would've been four miles but crossed the river - cabby flatly said "I'm not going south of the river this late, I won't get any fares to come back") to deliberately taking long routes (I took a cab from Covent Garden to Islington once, when we were about to cross the river I told the cabby I'm a Londoner, not a tourist, and if you cross the river then I'm getting out).

I really dislike Uber, but there's no question I'd rather use them in London than a black cab. This is one of those decisions that are likely to be fully justified, but will still suck for those who have come to rely on them.

Last time my (getting rather elderly) mother came to London I told her and her husband to get an Uber as it was easier than them standing in the rain trying to hail a cab.

They flatly refused. They'd been told by a black cab driver the night before there was a 'strong possibility' they would get raped or robbed by 'foreign' drivers.

Why not suggest one of London's myriad of other options, which don't have so much in the way of unethical baggage?

The tube is fine for the most part but it can be a drag going from the eastern parts of London to LHR directly (or to Paddington or Victoria)

Addison Lee is a good alternative. Drivers tend to be a bit more professional, prices are not that much higher and cars are generally nice.

Their previously voiced views on cyclists should be taken into account though.

http://road.cc/content/news/56999-addison-lee-chairman-airs-...

The Keen Group have always been reliable for us (but could hold similar views for all I know)

You can downvote, but I hate cyclists in cities, because many of them break road rules. They think of themselves as neither pedestrians, nor vehicles. When they drive on pavements, they presume being pedestrian and expect to be treated equally (even though they operate a large mass of steel, often with high speeds, enough to cause serious injuries). When they are on the road, they like to be pedestrians and cross traffic lights, when cars have stopped. Don't know why cyclists constantly show such a selfish attitude. I am not singling out London, as I witnesses similar behavior in many European countries.

So, the cyclists behave just like car drivers then ... /sorta-joking

(FWIW I'm both and sometimes ride a motorbike or drive a van.)

What is the problem with cyclists cross the road on a pedestrian crosswalk (with a reasonable speed of course)? In some European countries cyclists are actually forbidden to take direct left turn on the road and have to use pedestrian crosswalk for that.

This is why cycle infrastructure, like one finds in Perth, WA is so good. In some places there is a separate cycle-road distinct from both pavement and road, in others there are cycle tracks running alongside train tracks, away from cars and pedestrians. It works really well, because someone bothered to plan.

I've seen many cyclists go through red lights in cases where doing so is obviously safe. But for comparison I don't think I've met a single car driver who obeyed speed limits, indeed they seem affronted when I raise that question.

I have never seen in London a car driver run a red light but I regularly see cyclists blast through a red light at > 20mph and it is always the ones on fixies or racing bikes not actual bikes built for commuting.

I have also seen bikes blast through pedestrian refuges during the rush hour

Black cabs do it regularly on Oxford Street.

Then let's ban cars in cities, considering the harm car traffic has caused to inner cities andvtgeir inhabitants.

Oh, and don't complain that infrastructure built for cars sucks when used by bikes.

Better to have the selfish people on bikes than in cars.

I'd not sure I'd call the AL drivers professional. A number of them are complete psychopaths around the Heathrow area.

More so than cabbies or Uber drivers?

Considerably worse. Some people use them as a cab service for the local school and it's like a pinball machine.

There are lots of private hire car firms, Addison Lee springs to mind immediately. And practically every street in the city has a minicab firm...

Not that I use Uber (not really necessary in Edinburgh and they don't operate where I live) - but one of the problems with there being so many taxi and minicab firms is how do you tell which ones are actually any good when traveling to a new location?

I've had great experiences with taxis, but also appalling ones... At least Uber seemed to be trying to solve that problem - shame they decided to solve a real problem while being a shamelessly immoral company.

I agree to some extent. Having a single app you can open, regardless of what city or even country you're in, and knowing you'll get a good service at a good price, that's a great idea!

The behaviour of Uber has been terrible, and it's a shame they don't operate much more like a passenger->service matching system with ratings, rather that operating their own fleet kinda-sorta-maybe (but they're all self-employed!)

It would be kind of neat to have a standard platform for location based services....

Edit: Not just discovery, but transactions as well

Mini cab drivers are often self employed, they pay a "radio fee" for the booking office, provide their own vehicle, licensing etc, have fares set centrally, and they keep their fares (and take cash to avoid paying tax).

How is uber any different?

On that regard I would say that the court case a little while back about the employment status of uber drivers might have some bearing. IIRC they demanded some drivers be available at certain times, and did other things that put the lie to "self employed" status.

Don't get me wrong, I know all the shady shit that goes on in this direction with delivery drivers etc, and I expect at some point we're going to end up with a big shift in the rules.

With Uber it's just one of many things that I dislike about them.

In my experience Addison Lee, Kabbee and the other private mini cabs are completely useless for uber use case. Unless you booked them in advance you need to be prepared to wait up to 30 minutes or more. With uber I can request a ride and I'm pretty sure that at worst in 5 minutes I'm inside the car.

And you're just as likely to be attacked/raped/whatever with a local minicab firm, probabpynmore as there's less tracking of what's happening.

Odd then, that the police are specifically calling out Uber for non-cooperation on this, and a failure to put proper checks in place.

Will be resolved with crossrail next year, thankfully.

I used an Uber for a 45 minute journey recently. The seatbelt didn't work. In the UK it's illegal to not wear a seatbelt, and it's against Uber's terms of service for me not to wear a seatbelt, and against their terms of service for the driver not to provide one.

Uber didn't care, told me they would "talk to the driver". I'd have expected at least an acknowledgement that they endangered my safety, but no, no acknowledgement of any fault at all.

Endangered your safety? Did someone force you into the vehicle?

The seatbelt broke 10 mins into the journey while we were on a motorway. It's illegal to stop on the motorway, and being left at the side of the road isn't exactly a great alternative.

In that case it was working when you sat down so it's not like the driver was trying to pull a fast one on you. What did you expect him to do? Like you said, he couldn't just pull over.

Sure, there wasn't a lot he could do right then, but Uber could have:

- Acknowledged the situation.

- Agreed that it was not right.

- Committed to not using that vehicle until the issue was rectified (not that I'd necessarily trust them on this, but it would be good to say).

- Could have refunded me or given me credit for the risk.

I think in a perfect world, the driver would have stopped at the nearest safe place, attempted to fix the belt, and failing that another car would have been dispatched to pick us up and finish the journey, but I realise that's unlikely to happen in a service that cheap.

And how would this have gone down with "Dave's minicab firm"? You really think they'd give a stuff? If the driver doesn't have a legal vehicle he's risking his license, be it uber or daves cabs.

How does a seatbelt break on the motorway in any case? Did it just spring out of the socket?

To be fair that does change the meaning of "didn't work" though.

It worked, then it "didn't work". It "didn't work" for the majority of the journey.

I'm not really sure what you expect the driver or Uber to do in that situation - there's no good solution AFAICT. The only option would be to leave the motorway at the next exit and arrange alternative transport.

Yeah, it's a tricky situation, but at the very least I would expect Uber to _acknowledge the situation_, rather than just saying "thanks for your feedback". I would have expected an apology, not extensive but literally just "I'm sorry about that, it's in our policy not to have that happen to you and we'll make sure this is fixed". Nope.

I had a non uber cab back from the airport once. The driver started slowing down on the motorway which was unusual at 11pm at night so I looked up from my phone, he stopped on the hard shoulder in the dark to fiddle with his sat nav and refused to move until I phoned the cab firm (I told them clearly I would not use them again as if I was about to ring 999).

Haven't used manchester Cars since.

You still chose to ride. You're the one not wearing a seat belt. You were within your right to exit the vehicle and order a new one but you choose not. Of course Uber doesn't care. You didnt care enough either so what should Uber do?

The difference is that those companies haven't built software with the express purpose to operate extrajudicially.

Being "innovative" doesn't mean that you have full reign to operate unethically.

> Being "innovative" doesn't mean that you have full reign to operate unethically.

You are right. Being "Government" means you have full reign to operate unethically.

Do you believe that if a government comission said that Uber cabs are safer than taxi cabs, that they would ban taxis?

They would a taxi company if they built software to allow their drivers to break the law.

If you truly believe that, you are naive. There is no reasonable situation that would make any government turn on its own cabs.

Where are there government operated cabs?

Everywhere. Tipically the gov' puts forth a guideline on license use and sells the licenses. In many markets, you cannot be a cab driver without dealing with purchasing a license through or related with the state, and then you have to abide by the state regulations. Only a few of the guidelines typically contrain options: having to paint all cars the same means that different car quality is masked from the user. Depending on the market, doing a complaint on a cab driver, it goes to the state and it goes nowhere, because the state does not fullfill quality control, etc. In Buenos Aires, the government is also providing an Uber-like app for taxi-cabs.

I dont know the details of London, but most of the time, cabs are what they are because of the government, that has a fiduciary duty to the people they sold the licenses to.

Or the card machine that is "broken"

"You are required to have one that works...no?" — "Nah mate, this one literally just broke, they'll fix it when I'll return the cab later."

"Awesome mate, they can find me at that time"

one cabbie took me hostage till we found an ATM.

not turning the meter on, or asking you to give them the postcode (ie they should know how to go to you area of town, that's part of their training)

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